


Ripples in the Air

by SkiaShadow



Category: Original Work
Genre: Bubble outside of time travel, I don't know how to properly tag original works can someone help, I started writing this years ago, It's not that good at all, That's probably more accurate, Time Travel, kind of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-15
Updated: 2017-12-14
Packaged: 2019-02-14 23:04:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13018050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkiaShadow/pseuds/SkiaShadow
Summary: Three people are trasported to a strange place that seems to be outside of time...And I suck at summaries.





	1. Chapter 1

Prologue  
On one of the days it had happened, Carl had been sitting in the woods, listening to the birds talking. Carl imagined what they would say: Isn’t life so horrible? Yes, it is! Humans are despicable creatures! Far away in distance and time, Melisandre had been listening to the first breeze of the dawn whisper to the trees in an eerie melody. In a distant galaxy, more than a hundred years after Melisandre’s time, Ashra had been wondering how she had let herself end up here, so far away from the lakes, the trees, the birds, and all other animals, wishing desperately that something, anything would happen. 

At exactly those three moments in time, all the birds stopped their constant song. The wind stopped its whispering. The leaves stopped their constant rustling and every single man-made thing stopped. 

In a factory all the way in Beijing, chairs stopped being made. The incessant clanking of a chocolate factory ground to a halt. For those three split seconds all the planets stopped orbiting the sun. Every vehicle on Broadway stopped, and all over the universe men, women, animals, Time Lords, other aliens, and children fell silent. But only for a second…

…

Taken Out of Time

At the same time as everything stopped in all three times, three things happened. Three very important things.

In Carl’s time a person spoke their last sentence, a sentence that would one day save a life. 

Somewhere, a man laughed.

3 people disappeared, one from each time (I don’t need to tell you who they were)

If even one of these things hadn't happened, things might not have come out the way they did, and the terrible thing that was to come might not have happened. But it will happen and did happen and there is nothing we can do about it. Thinking about what might have happened only makes the truth harder to face. You may think now or later that none of these things should have made a difference, but they did. One thing causes another which leads to another until everything is blown out of proportion, a case of the butterfly effect. Chaos theory.  
Carl had been thinking about the birds and the horrible thing that had just happened, when he was suddenly aware that the birds had stopped singing. That same second he felt a strange swooping sensation in his stomach. It was like he was in an elevator that had just dropped down. The only difference was that he didn't feel like he was dropping down. He felt like he was leaving something. He also felt like it was taking both forever and no time at a- oh! With a start, he realized that he had unwittingly stumbled upon what he was leaving. He was leaving time. Then he must have fallen asleep because the next thing he remembered was wondering where he was.

Melisandre had been lying on the grass listening to the sounds of nature. She fell asleep right before the swooping sensation started and was dreaming about riding a roller coaster. Then the roller coaster turned into a time machine, (which, because she was a huge Doctor Who fan, was a time machine like the TARDIS) then whisked her away into the unknown. A little while later she was going to wake up in a strange place completely bewildered, wondering what in the universe she was doing there only to find later that she wasn't in the universe at all.  
Ashra had been pondering her fate when suddenly she realized that she was moving out of time. She couldn’t explain how she knew it, but she had just always known things like that. When she looked down she saw that she was on a rollercoaster in Riverside Park. Then she distantly remembered that there were no rollercoasters in Riverside Park, so she must be dreaming.


	2. A Strange Discovery Concerning Ripples

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They wake up and see ripples in the air (roll credits *ding* (Cinemasins anyone?))

A Strange Discovery Concerning Ripples

Ashra forced herself to sit up and found that she was still too sleepy to open her eyes. She knew that a boy and a girl were lying next to her, and had a knowledge of their looks in her head. The girl had peach skin and long, wavy, bright red hair. The boy had very light brown skin and short straight dark brown hair. Ashra herself had milk chocolate skin and long, flyaway, rough, wavy black hair, yanked into a ponytail down her back. 

She wondered how long she had been sitting and thinking. A second? (a minute? an hour? Or no time at all?) Later she realized that she was not sitting there “now” because there was no now. There was also no yesterday, no tomorrow, and though she could not find the words to explain how, she would know that there was no such thing as time in this place. No one here would age, die, or stay the same age, and no time would pass. She would not be able to explain exactly what it was like. The closest she would be able to get was that it was a tiny bit like Neverland from Peter Pan, and even that would be a long way off. 

She realized that she could open her eyes now. As soon as she did she realized things were not normal in any sense of the word. She found it very hard to describe what she saw, (it was very hard to describe anything around her) but there is evidence from the most reliable source that this is how she would have described it if she tried: There was a tree, lots of green grass, and blue skies. The thing that bothered her was that there were ripples in the air. 

She put her hand and through a ripple. The second she did, her hand looked different. It seemed to push something forward hard that she couldn’t see and, slightly scared, she quickly moved her hand back out. “They are not just ripples in the air!” She thought with sudden realization. “They are ripples in space and time.”

OK, OK, That was a horrible place to interrupt, but I just had to! I just wanted to tell you something! here it is: If she had not put her hand through the ripple “___ ____” would not have happened! Anyway, back to the story.

Melisandre woke up in a strange place, completely bewildered, wondering what in the universe she was doing here only to find later that she wasn't in the universe at all. There was a girl who looked about her age sitting next to her. 

“Hello. I’m Melisandre,” she said tentatively. “How'd I get here? Do you live here?” 

The girl turned her head slowly. “No. I got here the same way you did,” she said softly. “As for how we got here, I don’t know yet. Don’t touch the ripples.”

“What rippl-Oh!” Then she saw them. There were ripples! In the air!! Melisandre gasped in surprise. That was impossible!

“I think that they are disturbances in the flow of time and space,” the girl continued. “Oh yeah, and there is no such thing as time here.” 

Melisandre was having a very hard time keeping up with all of this. She could tell she wasn’t dreaming from the total clarity of her surroundings, but the rest was like something straight out of a movie. It seemed completely impossible, yet here she was. Melisandre must have looked confused and frantic because the peculiar girl started to look worried. 

“Maybe you should rest a little bit,” she said. “If you’re not used to this sort of thing it can be very disorienting. By the way, my name is Ashra.”

“I’m fine,” said Melisandre, weakly and unconvincingly. “I’ll just lie down again.”

Just then a strange boy who had been lying next to her woke up. 

“Where…" he he mumbled groggily. 

“What’s your name?” Melisandre and Ashra asked at the same time.

“Jinx,” they both said. Then...

“Double jinx” And…

“Master jinx” Finally...

“Personal padlock.” Then they both fell to the ground laughing. Ashra looked overjoyed at talking and connecting with Melisandre which made her wonder...   
“I’m Melisandre and this is Ashra,” Melisandre managed to say, before bursting into laughter yet again. The boy still looked very confused, but he told them his name, Carl, and joined in on the fun. He seemed to understand that he wasn't in the universe and was just accepting it as if used to strange things happening. Then he saw the ripples and his face darkened.

“Stay away from those,” he murmured. “I’ve seen them.” 

Melisandre was confused at this. How could he have seen them? Not even Ashra, who seemed to know a lot, had seen them… had she?

Ashra was nervous. She hadn’t talked to people in so long that she wasn’t sure how to act. But as soon as she met Melisandre she knew she had found a friend. A friend who, though they did not have experience with “time stuff,” thought a lot like her. And soon she would consider Carl a good friend as well. But that was yet to come.

Carl had always been able to see things. Not like that stupid prophecy stuff from books. Just small things. For example, he could tell that, though they were acting as friends, Ashra and Melisandre had just met. Exactly a month ago he had had the biggest sight yet. He had seen the ripples. He had not understood why they were important at the time. All he had understood was that they were bad. Very bad. Now he was actually seeing them, and that same feeling came back. A feeling of … foreboding. 

“I hope neither of you touched those,” Carl muttered darkly.

“I put my hand in one,” Ashra whispered, turning a pale shade of gray. That was exactly what Carl had been afraid of. Tears welled up in his eyes threatening to spill over. He had lost too many things that he could have saved with his seeing gift! 

When he had met Ashra and Melisandre, he had hoped to start over, maybe make some new friends, but he had failed her, yet again. His seeing always happened so he could use it for something, but he had always been too late to. It seemed as if once again, he was too late. He did not know what he could have stopped, but it was most likely bad, though he did not know how bad.. 

His friends seemed to have noticed his watering eyes and miserable expression. They were exchanging uneasy glances. It was Melisandre who spoke first.

“Are you okay… what’s your name again?”

“Carl.”

“Are you okay, Carl?”

“No! I’ve failed her! Again!” The tears that had been threatening to spill over for a while now, streamed down his face as Carl let out an anguished sob. He curled up into a ball, and rocked back and forth, sobbing all the while. He could hear Ashra and Melisandre whispering anxiously to each other, but he didn’t care. He continued to sob. Tears, not just for himself, but for all the people he had been too late to save, rolled down his cheeks as ghosts from the past he thought were gone, rose again to the surface of his mind.

It was one of the few times in her life, that Ashra was completely at a loss for what to do. Distant places without time? Time ripples in the air? She could deal with those. But a person sobbing uncontrollably and rolling around? That was just too much to ask. I mean, come on! She hadn’t even talked to someone, much less comforted them in such a long time that she had no idea what to do. Luckily for her Carl was starting to calm down and was wiping his eyes.

“Sorry.” He mumbled, looking slightly embarrassed.

“It’s okay. Crying is nothing to be ashamed of,” Melisandre said. “Who have you failed?”

“I don't want to talk about it right now.”

“That’s fine. But I think we should talk. First question: Why are we all he-” Ashra stopped talking and stared in surprise, for Melisandre had just sunk into the ground.

“Sinkholes!” Carl yelled. He looked like he was going to say more, but then his eyes glazed over and he stopped dead in his tracks. He appeared to be seeing something, but he also seemed not to be looking at anything.

“Carl!” Ashra yelled, but Carl either couldn’t hear her, or was pretending not to. Then, suddenly, he came out of his apparent reverie.

“The sinkholes are not what they look like! They lead in-” suddenly a sinkhole started to pull Carl into the ground as well.

“Carl!” Ashra shrieked. She had already lost Melisandre, but she was not going to lose Carl too. She sprinted over to him and grabbed his hand, trying to pull him out, but he resisted her attempts, which consequently were rendered futile.

“Stop resisting! I might be able to get you out!”

“Sinkholes are good!” Carl choked out, “Lead to a good place!” And with one final kick, he wriggled out of her grip and was gone, leaving Ashra was heartbroken. Two friends lost in the span of - umm… well since time didn’t exist, she had no idea how long it had been. 

Suddenly the full weight of what had happened sunk in. They were gone! Dead! Suffocating in the earth! She walked over to where Melisandre had been standing and knelt down. The grass was still green, the colors still vibrant. Why? How could warmth be around her while her friends were dead? How could anything go on? How could she survive on her own again? Wait- Ashra began to panic as she realized she was alone in a strange land; both of her friends dead. But then the panic went back into sadness as she remembered the sound of Melisandre’s laughter as they jinxed each other. Ashra felt empty, like nothing mattered anymore. She had stopped caring what happened to her and stepped right to the spot Melisandre had been standing, waiting for a sinkhole to appear. 

Ashra felt herself being sucked into the earth as if a tunnel had opened beneath her. She expected to be suffocated in the earth around her, but instead she found herself sliding down a chute of slippery limestone that then propelled her upwards and popped her out aboveground once more. She looked around and saw that she was outdoors in a place very similar to the one that she had just left, ripples and all. The only difference was that there was a bench. And there, sitting on the bench to her left were Melisandre and Carl, looking around anxiously for her. When they saw her, relief showed clearly on both of their faces.

“Ashra!” Carl said, “We were worried that you were stuck there!” Ashra stopped dead. They were alive?!“ A tear ran down her cheek as she looked at them. 

“How- you- you’re alive?! I’m alive?!” 

“You thought we had died?”

“Yes, I thought you had died! You just disappeared! Don’t do something like that to me again!”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know it would happen. What do you mean by saying I’m alive though?”

Ashra avoided the question. She had been near hysterical so she calmed herself slowly, taking deep breaths. “It’s fine, you couldn’t have known.” She quickly sat on the bench next to Melisandre, putting a hand around her shoulder as if to make sure she stayed there. Ashra was still shaken, but hid it behind her near flawless mask, almost perfect from years of practice in shoving things there, out of sight and out of mind.

“Well, now that we are here, this is a perfect place to talk. First question: Why are we all here?”

A/N: Does anyone know how to do formatting and italics and stuff here?


	3. Figuring it All Out (Or trying to); Part One; The Backstories

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They attempt to figure out what in the name of anything they're doing here and kinda fail miserably.

##  **_Figuring It All Out (Or trying to); Part One; The Backstories_ **

**M** **elisandre** had gone through a lot in the last few minutes. First the sinkholes that were actually limestone chutes, then being spewed out in this place, without Carl or Ashra, and then worrying about Ashra. But all of that flew out of her head, as if she had put it into a pensieve, when Ashra asked the question. Why had she not thought of that before! That question immediately gave way to billions more, which she then fired rapidly at Ashra and Carl.

“How did we get here? Why us? Who-”

“Wait!” Ashra interrupted, “We’ll deal with all that later. Let’s start small.”

“Why don’t we all give a little background about ourselves?” Melisandre suggested.

“Ok,” Ashra shrugged nonchalantly. “My full name is Ashra Elizabeth Smith. I was an ordinary 11 year old girl, though a grade above my age level, living in New York with my aunt, when I learned there was a program where a bunch of 9-13 year girls could go on a non-piloted spaceship by themselves. By this I mean that they each went on  _ their own _ spaceship. There were 9 girls _ apparently _ “randomly” selected. Each girl was sent to a different planet, with all necessary provisions. I thought it was strange, considering-”

“Wait a minute,” Carl interrupted, slightly late. “Spaceship?” Melisandre’s jaw dropped. 

“You don’t know what a spaceship is?!!!!” she practically screeched. 

“Of course I know what the  _ concept _ of a spaceship is. But they don’t exist!”

At this Melisandre began to openly gape at Carl, actually opening and closing her mouth. She began spluttering incoherently. Ashra had a little bit more of a cool reaction. For a second she lost her calm demeanor, and then immediately regained her composure.

“Where do you live, Carl?” She asked, strangely unruffled given the circumstances.

“London. Why?”

“ _ When exactly  _ did you get here? What exact date? Including the year?” Ashra asked again, ignoring his second question.

“March 23, 1957! Why, do you not even know the date?” he replied, his original confusion starting to dissipate as he grew annoyed at Ashra’s reticence. Though Ashra seemed completely calm, Melisandre was in shock. Too many confusing things had happened to her today. It was too much to cope with. She paled and slumped backward into the bench. Ashra had looked like she was going to say something, but when she caught sight of Melisandre, she closed her mouth. 

“ Are you okay? Maybe you should lie down,” Ashra said, concerned, as she got up from the bench. 

“I- I think I’m better now. But, Carl! You’re from the 1950’s!”

“Obviously. When else would I be from?!” Carl replied. He was getting very annoyed, as if he had no idea why that might be strange.  
“When were you born?” Ashra asked.

“February 3, 1945.”

“So you’re 12.” Ashra said almost instantly.  _ She must be really good at math! _  Melisandre thought.

“Yeah. How old are both of you, and when were you born?”

“I’m 13. I was born on August 18, 2003. When I got here it was October 21, 2016. What about you, Ashra?”

“I’m 13. I was born on April 21, 2145. When I left Earth in 2156 it was March 5. I don’t know what day it was when I got here, only that it’s been two years since my exile from earth. It was probably sometime near February 2.”

“How do you not know what day it was?” Carl asked, surprised, seeming to have already processed the information that both of them were from his future.. At the same time Melisandre gasped.

“You’re from the future?!”

“Let me finish my story,” Ashra said, ignoring them both. “So, where was I?”

“You were saying why it was strange.”

“Oh, right. I thought it was strange because they no longer let people go into space at all, so why were they going to let a bunch of little kids go? I soon learnt the answer to that question.”

“What was it?” Melisandre asked, intrigued.

“Did I tell you that my aunt didn’t like me at all?” Ashra asked. “She hated me. And do you know what? When we were at the the place where the spacecrafts took off I was talking to the other kids and all of them were also disliked, or not wanted.” A look at first of confusion, then understanding crossed Melisandre’s face.

“They were trying to get rid of you guys,” she said.

“Yeah. We were like the  _ UnWanteds  _ from the book called  _ The UnWanteds _ . It’s stopped being printed a long time ago, but my grandmother had a really old copy. She loves old things, and even had a million old songs that I used to listen to a lot before she died.”

“I know  _ The UnWanteds _ ! Have you read  _ The Golden Compass _ ?” Melisandre asked excitedly.

“You guys can finish this later. For now, Ashra should finish her story. And by the way you never told me what a spacecraft was,” Carl interrupted.

“A spacecraft is a thing that lets you fly into space and visit other planets. Okay, so basically we were all there, ready to get into our separate spacecrafts, and chatting, when one girl said that she didn’t want to do this. She walked up to one of the adults organizing things and asked very nicely to be allowed to leave.

“What happened?” asked Melisandre.

“They said sure and then jabbed a needle into her arm.”

“They killed her?!” Melisandre cried, in outrage.

“Yup. Without even blinking an eye,” Ashra replied. 

Melisandre had been too caught up in Ashra’s story to notice before, but now she realized that, though at first glance she looked calm and composed, Ashra was shaking slightly. She looked carefully at Ashra’s face and saw how actually traumatized she was by her past. Could the future really be that bad? 

Ashra started to pace up and down as she continued her story. “After that the rest of us found it clear. Our choices were to go, or to die. So the rest of us went. My spaceship went to a distant planet, which I named Keleptus, that was so hot that I could only go out of the craft for up to fifteen minutes at a time, and that was with an oxybubble.”

“What’s an oxybubble?” Melisandre asked. Ashra looked at her blankly.

 

**Ashra** had had enough. Just thinking about what had happened was horrible for her, but telling it as a story?  _ That _ was just traumatizing. 

“An oxybubble is a bubble of oxygen around a person’s body that lets them breathe in space. So I lived there for a little less than two years. It was so boring that I sometimes wanted to kill myself, instead of slowly starving to death on a planet by myself. Oh yeah, there were no other living beings.”

“When did you run out of food and water?” Carl asked.

“I conserved so much water, that I only ran out the day I was taken here. Food, on the other hand, I had been out of for 3 ½ weeks. So that’s my story. Carl?”

“Okay. My name is Carl Fischer Browne. When I was three both my parents died. The police managed to come up with a medical report saying that they died from Polio, but the police never liked my parents. I’ve always suspected that they were gotten rid of. Instead of finding a relative or orphanage to take me, they threw me onto the streets. That was when I had my first  _ sight _ . I don’t remember what it was, but it was something very minor. All the rest of my  _ sights  _ were minor until I was ten, but I didn’t trust them.”

“What do you mean by  _ sight _ ?” Melisandre asked, confused.

“It’s like a vision ..but not. I see something in my head and I get a feeling about it. My sights always happen for a reason, usually to save something or someone.”

“Oh, okay.”

“Anyway, when I was ten I saw a kid with long brown hair. Somehow, I knew that she needed saving. I didn’t know how I was supposed to save her, so I waited, thinking that  _ something _ must happen sooner or later. Nothing did happen for a while, and I was beginning to think I had waited in vain, but on the very same day I was taken here, something did happen. I had another  _ sight _ . This time, it was the same girl, except there was someone holding a knife, ready to stab her from behind. Somehow, I knew where it was happening. I ran there and saw the knife approaching the girl. If I had acted immediately, I might have been able to stop it. But I was scared. I hesitated for  _ just _ a second, and that was enough to cancel out any chance of saving her. The person holding the knife stabbed the girl and ran. I rushed over to the girl, but one glance at the wound told me it was too late. The girl looked at me at whispered a sentence, so quietly I almost didn’t hear it:  _ Carl, trust your visions and you may be able to save people.  _ Her eyes focused on my face and she looked into my eyes. They were the last thing she would ever see. Then something in the depths of her eyes died out, and she was gone. Since then I’ve tried to listen and trust my  _ sight, _ and I always act upon it. I watched a girl I barely knew die with the knowledge that I could have saved her.” 

_ Carl looks haunted, still plagued by the past  _ Ashra noticed as she came out of the trance Carl’s story had put her in. 

“Carl, I-” Ashra stopped, not knowing what to say.  _ I’m sorry  _ just didn't cut it.

“Anyway, what's done is done,” he said, with a brave attempt at a smile. “Melisandre, why don't you tell your story?”

“Actually, before Melisandre starts, I have a question for you.”

“Okay, Ashra,” Carl replied.

“If you're from the 1950’s, why do you use words and slang that only existed in my great-grandmother's time? I think that would be around the same time as Melisandre.”

“Oh, that. Well, the words and their meanings come with my  _ sights _ . With each sight there is a word which I somehow know the meaning of. After I know the word it just slips into my vocabulary like water down a drain.”

“Okay,” said Ashra, nodding her head, “Melisandre, what’s your story?”

 

**Melisandre** felt very inferior. Both Ashra and Carl had such tragic, heroic, backstories. In other words, book backstories. But Melisandre? She was just an ordinary person!

 

_ Or so she thought… Hehehe. What’s that? You want to know more? Well, I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to tell you. You’ll just have to wait and be...patient! Ha, that’s funny. I really can’t imagine a person like you being patient. Now, stop badgering me with your questions, and let me finish this story! You do want to read the rest soon, right?! Well, how am I supposed to write if you’re constantly asking me questions?! Hmph! _

 

“Melisandre?” Ashra asked again.

“Oh, yeah. Sorry. I’ll start now.”

“Well, get on with it then,” Carl said looking irritated. “We shouldn’t stay in one place too long. We don’t know who or what else is here and we have already been sitting on this bench for quite a while.”

“Okay!” said Melisandre, slightly taken aback by Carl’s tone. “So basically I’m a completely ordinary person and have no tragic backstory at all. Happy?!?”

“No,” said Ashra matter-of-factly. “What’s your full name? Where do, or should I say did, you live? What was happening the day you were taken? Who are your friends, if you have any? What are your hobbies?”

“Well, I’ll answer your questions in order. Don’t expect anything interesting! Nothing interesting ever happens to me,” Melisandre sighed. “ My full name is Melisandre Sonia Amari Lexington. My address is 217 Pudding Street, Putnam Valley, NY. The day I was taken I had just woken up and was outside, listening to the first breeze of dawn whisper to the trees in its eerie dance. I have many friends, but no one best friend who I tell everything to.” At that moment, a strange look came over Melisandre’s face. Longing? Sadness? Both? Melisandre herself didn’t know. Then the moment passed and Melisandre continued. “Anyway, my hobbies are drawing, listening to music, and lying on the grass. Happy  _ now _ ?” 

Ashra shrugged. “Not really. Anyway, back to the original question. Why are we all here?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Someone please tell me if this sucks. I feel like it does.
> 
> Side note: I figured out the formatting! Yay!


	4. Figuring it All Out (Or trying to); Part Two; The Theories

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ah, theories. Sometimes wrong, sometimes right, sometimes utterly confusing and extremely hard to follow.

##  **_Figuring It All Out (Or trying to); Part Two; The Theories_ **

“ O r, on second thought, we’ll start with this,”  **Ashra** changed her mind, “Where are we?”

“I’m pretty sure that this place is not in our universe,” Melisandre said, hesitantly.

“I agree,” Carl said. ”I think it’s a place outside of our universe, where time doesn’t exist.”

“Wait a minute,” Melisandre interjected, frowning. “In a book I read called  _ The Time Fetch _ a character says that if time didn’t exist, everything would happen at the same time.” She looked around pointedly as if to indicate that that could not be true.

“Time doesn’t really exist, you know,” Ashra pointed out. “Have you read the book  _ When You Reach Me  _ by Rebecca Stead? It was probably published around your time. It’s one of my grandmother’s extremely old books that she made me read.”

“No. I haven’t read it, but I’ve heard of it,” Melisandre replied.

“Well, time is explained really well in it. I’ll try to explain what I mean,” Ashra sighed inwardly, knowing how hard it would be to explain. If only she had  _ When You Reach Me _ with her! That would make it so much easier!

“Okay.”

“You know how people used to watch movies on box thingies? Well, the image on the screen doesn’t actually move. It’s just a lot of images taken very quickly so that, when put together at the right speed, they look like they move. What we call time is very similar to that. Everything that has happened, will happen, and is happening, already exists in snapshots. Every moment in time is a snapshot and we are constantly jumping from one snapshot to the next.”

“So time is a bunch of snapshots?” Melisandre asked, confused.

“No. What we call time is the jumping through the snapshots. The act of moving from one moment to the next, constantly, is time. Not the snapshots themselves. You should read  _ When You Reach Me _ . Rebecca Stead explains this much better than I can.”

“I think I get it now. How does this connect to where we are?” Melisandre asked.

“My theory about this place is that it is only one snapshot. Have you noticed that there is no wind? The sun hasn’t moved at all since we got here, and even the ripples aren’t rippling.” Ashra smiled inwardly at her horrible joke  _ (It couldn’t even be called a joke. Jokes jokes are supposed to be funny) _ , though she knew it wasn’t the time to have made one. Still, she hadn’t been able to resist. “I think that this place only has one second in time of existence, but that second is forever existing.”

“If this place has only one snapshot, how are we moving?” Melisandre asked perceptively.

“I think we are still jumping, but we are not moving. We’re jumping in place, up and down on this one moment, because there are no other snapshots that have this place in them to jump to.  This place has come into being 3 times, only for a second each time. The only way to get here is to arrive at one of the three times it existed, all three of which are technically the same moment in time. The three times are the times that we are from. This place shouldn’t exist for more than one second at a time. When we leave it will be as if we were never here. In fact, we technically cannot be here right now, despite the fact that we are. I don’t understand how we are here, but we are. Let’s accept the fact that this is impossible and not question how it has managed to happen. The fact that we aren’t actually here because we can’t be is probably why we aren’t aging and are also not staying the same age. Of course, when I say we aren’t actually here I mean we can’t be and as soon as we leave we won’t have been here. As of now we are here, though we technically can’t be and aren’t. Think of it like this: Each time we move, or do anything really, even breathe, we are rewriting the snapshot with the place in it. We are in the snapshot, so we remember all the past versions of the snapshot since we arrived. For us, it seems like there is a sequence of events because we remember past snapshots, but there is actually only one snapshot being re-written over and over again.”

“Well, now that we have finished this question, let’s move on to this: how did we get here?” Carl said.

“I think that that is also a question we can’t answer and should just accept. I don’t know how we got here, but somehow we did,” Melisandre replied thoughtfully.

“I agree with Melisandre. There are too many things we don’t know for us to start coming up with theories. Let’s go back to the original question: Why are  _ we _ all here? Or in other words: Why us? Why not someone else?” Ashra interjected.

“Well, you and me have both seen death,” Carl said to Ashra. “We both weren't accepted in our society. We also both know about time stuff and are pretty smart for are age.”

“What about Melisandre?”

Carl hesitated. “I don’t know,” he said, finally. “You must know though,” he said, turning to Melisandre.

“I don’t! I’m just an ordinary person! I was probably brought here by accident. Maybe it was supposed to be my sister. She’s really smart.”

“That’s possible,” said Ashra thoughtfully. Carl glared pointedly for some reason. Ashra had absolutely no idea why. 

Melisandre on the other hand was looking angry. There was fire in her normally calm blue eyes as she radiated icy cold anger. Ashra almost felt like backing away in fear, but there was also something beautiful about Melisandre’s anger. Ashra felt as if someone had just dumped a truck full of determination and confidence onto Melisandre, who positively radiated both of those traits. There was a firmness set in her face and something about her eyes reminded Ashra of an ice wolf. Melisandre continued to radiate this newfound icy fire, but seemed calm as she said with finality, drawing herself up, “Even if it was supposed to be my sister, I’m the one who’s here and there is nothing we can do about it so let’s move on.”

“Okay,” Ashra was surprised at Melisandre’s anger. “I think we’ve covered all the important questions so far. Nothing seems to be happening so we are probably safe for now. Let’s look around a bit. I want to get a sense of how big this place is and what it’s like.”

“Okay,”  **Carl** replied. “Let’s go.” he got up from the bench, closely followed by Melisandre and Ashra. “Left or right?”

“Left,” said Ashra, firmly and immediately.

“Okay.” 

They started to walk left. At first their surroundings were much like they had been when they first arrived, but slowly the atmosphere got darker. The grass that had been incredibly green took on a yellowish hue and the trees became taller and more menacing. As they walked they had to begin to make detours to avoid the ripples, the number of which had increased greatly since they had started walking. After some amount of time (Carl thought it was at least two hours, but who could tell in this place?) they reached a gaping hole in the ground.

“I don’t like this,” said Ashra. 

Carl was about to respond when he  _ saw  _ something. He  _ saw  _ the pit and he understood what it was. He couldn’t explain how, but in the  _ sight  _ something had made him realize what it was.

“Carl!” Ashra said. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“I said your name about seven times befo-”

“I had a  _ sight _ !” Carl interrupted, “ I had a sight and now I know what the pit is.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whooo chapters. And I'm not writing at inhuman speeds, I'd just already written up to here. This is the last fully written chapter I had.

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: I hope you liked that. The writing style is a bit weird, because I started it when I'd just started writing then went back and edited, so I apologize. This note applies to the next three or four chapters as well, but after that it should be fine because I'm writing those chapters now.


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